re: The USS Nautilus (SSN 571) is christened and launched on this day in 1954...

Toured Nautilus in the mid 80's while awaiting a Boomer sea trial. The 571 boat was indeed small compared to modern subs. Like, I can't believe they sailed this little boat submerged under the Arctic Ocean in 1958 small.

Navigation was assisted by an early version of an Inertial Nav System designed for cruise missiles. Started from the Alaska side and surfaced 96 hours later near Greenland, logging 1,590 nm traveled mostly submerged under ice at an average speed for the cruise of 17 knots.

That's trucking for the first submerged circumnavigation of the Arctic with a stop at the Geographic North Pole, made possible with an inertial nav system. The INS derived position at the North Pole is noted at the bottom and marked N6A DR and N6A.



Adm Rickover was a hard arse and brilliant engineer.






I have a bronze Zippo lighter with the Nautilus image embossed, a small memento of my tour of the boat that's priceless to me.